Presenting the Nominees for 2013 Word of the Year

At the American Dialect Society's annual conference in Minneapolis, we have nominated words in various categories in our Word of the Year selection. I presided over the nominating session on Thursday in my capacity as chair of the society's New Words Committee. Winners will be selected from the different categories on Friday evening, culminating in the vote for the overall Word of the Year. Here's the list of nominees.

MOST USEFULbecause: introducing a noun or noun phrase (e.g., "because reasons," "because Internet")selfie: a photo taken of oneself, typically with a smartphone and shared on social mediaslash: used as a coordinating conjunction to mean "or" or "and/or" (e.g., "come and visit slash stay")strug(gle) bus: metaphor for a difficult situation, as in "I'm riding the struggle bus."

MOST CREATIVEbitcoin: an anonymous, decentralized, digital, encrypted currency and payment systemcatfish: to misrepresent oneself online, especially as part of a romantic deceptiondoge: an Internet meme with intentionally ungrammatical exclamations over an image of a dog (typically the Shiba Inu breed)robo sapiens: a class of robots with human-like intelligence

MOST UNNECESSARYcronut: a croissant-doughnut hybridsharknado: a tornado full of sharks, as featured in the Syfy Channel movie of that namestack-ranking: a method of ranking employees on a primitive curve (used and abandoned by Microsoft)

MOST OUTRAGEOUSfatberg: large deposit of fat, grease, and solid sewage found in London sewersrevenge porn: vindictive posting of sexually explicit pictures of someone without consents(c)hmeat: (blend of sheet + meat): meat product grown in a labthigh gap: a space between the thighs, taken by some as a sign of attractivness (also box gap)underbutt: the underside of buttocks, made visible by certain shorts or underwear

MOST EUPHEMISTICdemised: laid off from employment (used by the bank HSBC)least untruthful: involving the smallest necessary lie (used by intelligence director James Clapper)slimdown: reinterpretation of "shutdown" used on Fox News site

MOST LIKELY TO SUCCEEDbinge-watch: to consume vast quantities of visual entertainment in one sittingdrone: (trans. verb) to target with a drone, typically in a lethal drone strikeglasshole: a person made oblivious by wearing Google Glass, a head-mounted computerObamacare: term for the Affordable Care Act that has moved from pejorative to matter-of-fact shorthand

LEAST LIKELY TO SUCCEEDbirthmas: a simultaneous celebration of a birthday and ChristmasHarlem Shake: a video meme featuring comic, convulsive dancing accompanied by excerpt of the song "Harlem Shake" by the DJ BaauerThanksgivukkah: confluence of Thanksgiving and the first night of Hanukkah that will not be repeated for another 70,000 years